


Dead End

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Emotional Trauma, Episode Tag, Gen, Grief, Spoilers, major/minor character death, s10e21 Dark Dynasty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 13:49:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3898642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's lies may have finally broken Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead End

**Author's Note:**

> This came out in a rush, so forgive the errors. I just needed some kind of closure after what happened, though I'm not too sure this provided that either...

Dean walked away.

Sam gagged again, covered his mouth, wanted so badly to look away, but because it was Charlie and because he was to blame and because Dean didn’t so much as pause before he turned around and walked out of the hotel room, Sam couldn’t bring himself to do anything but stare at her. Tossed like a rag doll, shredded and bloody in the bathtub like so much trash, like the toy no one wanted. The girl no one could save.

Sam was still standing, gun dangling in his numb fingers when the flutter of feathers and a breath of wind moved beside him and suddenly Cas was there. He didn't look surprised. Pained. But not surprised. His eyes were overflowing with grief (the one emotion he seemed to have retained as an angel) when he turned to Sam and put a hand on his arm.

‘Cas, can you—?’

Cas looked almost hurt that Sam could even ask it. ‘No. You know I cannot raise the dead, Sam. It’s too late.’

‘How did you—?’

‘Dean.’

‘Dean…’ Sam nodded like of course that was the answer, naturally Dean would have called Cas, then shook himself and darted toward the door just as the Impala’s engine roared to life and her tires spun against slick pavement and spit gravel in her escape to the highway. ‘Dean!’

Sam sagged in the door, back of his hand to his mouth where he could still taste the bile trying to force its way up the back of his throat, gun still hanging from his fingers. He looked after the tail lights, watching them grow smaller and smaller in the distance. 

‘Jesus, Cas…what have I done?’

Cas was at his shoulder again and spoke quietly. ‘I told you, Sam. The lies—they never end well between the two of you. It is the one thing I cannot understand. The way you love each other so much, but there are always lies, subterfuges, deceits.’

‘I-I know.’ 

Sam tried to push away from the door, stumbled a little, leaned into Cas’ strong arm when it was offered. He felt so empty. How could he feel this empty when someone he’d loved—they’d _both_ loved—so much had just died so horribly? He swallowed, tried to find the tears, the sob that should be pushing up out of him like a force of nature that would not be denied. There was nothing. Just emptiness. Just a void that went on and on without end.

‘Sam, we need to go,’ Cas said quietly, head tilted attentively to the distant sirens that were growing closer.

The room was a disaster, the door splintered and off its hinges. The Stein-creep’s entrance had not been quiet or clean, and Sam was sure Charlie had not gone down without a fight. She never would have. She was a fighter. Right to the end.

‘Cas, I can’t—'

He couldn't leave her. Jesus, after everything she'd been through and done and helped them with and all he could do was leave her twisted and broken in the bathtub of a cheap motel? But his being here would raise questions that no one could afford. From a distance he might be able to see that she was provided for, given a decent funeral, looked after properly; but staying here would only put him in a snare that he might not be able to escape.

'Sam, we have to go.' 

Cas pulled Sam up from where his knees had started to give and drop him to the carpet.

'Where are we—?'

But there wasn't time for Sam to finish his question. His guts were jerked upward, wrapped around his heart for a count of five and then he was listing sideways into Cas' waiting arms in the war room of the Bunker. Cas waited until he was steady on his feet again and then backed up a step. 

'I'll go check on Rowena,' he said and was gone.

Sam turned, dropped his gun on the table in front of him, leaned there for a long, slow few heartbeats, willing back the nausea and keeping his eyes pinned wide open to hold at bay the fresh, sharp images of Charlie's broken body in that tub.

He heard the thump of a cupboard door in the kitchen and the rattle of ceramic on formica.

'Dean?'

How had Dean possibly beat them here? How fast had he been driving? Sam stumbled toward the kitchen, came around the door cautiously. He expected a bottle of Jack on the table with a tumbler to go with it, but surprisingly Dean was leaned back against the counter, ankles crossed, staring down into a plain white empty mug while he waited for the coffee to perk behind him. 

'Dean?'

Dean didn't look up, didn't acknowledge that Sam was in the same room with even so much as a twitch at the corner of his eye or the tightening of his mouth. He just leaned and stared into the bottom of the cup like all the world's most precious wisdom lay in it.

'Dean, I—' Sam cupped a hand to his mouth. God! How was he going to do this? 'Dean, I know-I know this is my fault. I know I shouldn't have-have kept the book from you. But you said it couldn't be destroyed, and if it can't then we'd have had it anyway a-and—' 

The confession was spilling out of him like water breaching a crumbling dam, but it was doing no good. 

The coffee pot groaned and burbled and Dean calmly reached behind him to fill his mug, every motion deliberate and careful. Restrained.

Sam swallowed hard. 'Dean, please… _please_. Say something.'

Dean sipped his coffee, settling his free hand, the arm with the Mark, on the counter at his hip, and Sam did not miss the way his knuckles curled and tightened until they were bloodless. He had the sudden urge to take a step back but stayed rooted to the spot, breathing through flared nostrils.

'Dean…'

'Sammy—

Sam flinched hard at the nickname, at the echo of darkness he heard underneath it.

'—you lied to me. Again.'

Sam nodded, unable to speak when Dean's gaze finally lifted, and as green as it still was it was diamond hard and cold and unforgiving, and Sam felt his heart start to pound.

'You know, I get it. I do,' Dean said, his tone so quiet and amicable that Sam wanted to run and hide because he would have preferred Dean shouting and throwing punches any day of the week instead of this calm that edged up against just this side of insanity. 'You want to save me. And me? I'm okay with that, Sammy. I—unlike some—don't mind some help in that department.' He sipped his coffee again and ran his thumb up against the rim, staring back down into it like he might divine the secrets of the universe in the tendrils of steam curling off its surface. 'I don't even mind you wanting to raze Heaven and Hell and everything in between, because that's what we do for each other, and it's okay.'

His eyes came up again, so sharp and pointed, Sam gasped like he'd been hit with a silver knife to the heart.

'Until someone else dies,' Dean whispered. 'And then…then it's not okay anymore, Sammy.'

Dean set the coffee cup aside and pushed off the counter, came straight across the room and stood in front of Sam, squinting up into his little brother's crumbling expression.

'I told you to leave this one alone. I told you it would kick our asses. Well…it didn't. It got Charlie instead.' Dean's eyes, still unbelievably dry, bored into Sam's. 'And that's on you, Sam. It's on you.'

Sam choked on a breath as Dean shouldered past him and out of the kitchen. He slumped over the nearest chair, gripping it like it was the last stable thing in the universe to keep him standing. He wanted to cry. Goddammit, why couldn't he cry? But his eyes stayed stubbornly dry and his chest empty but for the fast, frightened pound of his heart as he listened to Dean's footfalls echo away down the corridor.

He turned and wandered out of the kitchen, making his way back through the war room to the opposite corridor where Charlie's room was. There was nothing much in it. It wasn't like she'd stayed for more than a couple of days at a time. There were no pictures or posters or anything to really make it hers, just a stack of books that she'd gotten from the library and never put back. On the top of the stack were all of Baum's first edition Oz books, and not far away on the nightstand was the broken key that had opened the door to Oz.

Sam dropped onto the bed and reached out to pick up the key. How were they ever going to get word to Dora? She'd be heartbroken, and it was all Sam's fault. He set the key back on the table with shaking fingers and snagged the worn pink hoodie that Charlie had left thrown over the back of the desk chair. He balled it up in his big hands, pressed it against his cheek, and the tears finally burned their way out, like tracks of acid down his face.

'I'm so sorry, Charlie. Jesus Christ! I'm so sorry.'

He buried his nose in the soft fabric and tipped sideways onto the bed, letting the sobs work their way through him in spasms and jerks, punishing him with brutal, wracking force for his failure to protect her, his fault in ever drawing her into this at all.

——

Sam blinked his bleary way to consciousness, trying to clear the glue of leftover tears from his eyes. He knuckled them, scrubbing at his face, two days worth of stubble scratching at his palm. He stood up, wobbling a little unsteadily from muscles stiffened by too many hours in one position, frozen by grief and exhaustion. He hung Charlie's hoodie back on the chair, smoothed it tenderly with his hands, then noticed two of her barrettes tossed haphazardly at the edge of the desk. He righted them, sat them parallel beneath the desk lamp, and then let out a deep shuddering breath and left the room.

He stood in the corridor for a moment, unsure what to do next. He needed to get online, find the morgue her body had been taken to, make arrangements to have her cremated, maybe have her ashes sent back here to the Bunker, ask Cas if maybe…

He huffed a breath, dodging the thought. First, he had to find Dean. He never should have fallen asleep like that last night, leaving Dean to his own devices. As calm as he was, Sam wasn't fooled. Charlie was as good as their little sister. They both loved her, but she had a special place in Dean's heart, maybe because she was so broken—just like them—and he had a natural instinct to take care of broken things. He'd taken care of himself and Sam all his life. It was his nature. Charlie had been precious to him, something that was still sweet and naive and needed to be protected from the dangers of this world.

And Sam had thrust her into the middle of the worst kind of danger there was.

He knew damn good and well that Dean didn't want him around. Probably couldn't even stand the sight of him right now, but he also couldn't be left alone. Living on the ragged edge of the Mark's darkness like he had been recently, there was no telling what he might do; and Dean acting rational and calm like he was last night was cause for far greater concern than if he'd yelled and shouted and started throwing punches and breaking things.

He made his way across the Bunker and down the corridor to Dean's room. The silence pressed in around him like a crushing weight. He glanced at his watch—7am. Dean should be up by now, in the kitchen making coffee, or sitting in the library flipping though the online news; but the place was entirely silent. 

Sam knocked on Dean's door.

'Dean?'

No answer.

'Dean, I know you don't want to talk, and you don't have to, I just…I just wanted to be sure you were okay.'

That was stupid. How okay could either one of them possibly be anytime in the near future?

'Dean?'

Still no answer. Sam turned the knob and pushed the door slowly open. 

The desk lamp was on, shedding a little light across the the room to the perfectly made bed—military corners—where the pillow had obviously not been used last night. Sam's heart stuttered and picked up its pace. He looked over to the wall where Dean's spare shirts and one pair of jeans hung.

Gone.

Sam's eyes skimmed the shelves. Knives, gun—gone. The stack of skin mags that always sat beside the couch—gone. The toothbrush and razor in the glass on the sink—gone. The only thing left was the stack of what family  pictures they'd ever managed to salvage or take, sitting in the pool of yellow light cast by the lamp, turned face down.

'No…' Sam breathed, panic rising to clutch at his throat as he spun and legged it toward the garage.

Nononono.

The Impala was gone. Her place of state amid all the classic beauties in the garage was empty. Sam clung to the doorframe for a long minute before he turned and tore back to Dean's bedroom, franticly searching for a note, or a clue, or anything. He tossed the room for a good ten minutes but came up dry. He ran a shaking hand down his face, turned and headed for the kitchen, for his laptop and phone and maybe Cas would have some idea where he was.

The note was propped up on the salt shaker in the middle of the kitchen table.

Sam picked it up in trembling fingers and flipped it up to read his brother's firm, straight handwriting:

 

_We're done here, Sam. I'm done. Don't come looking._

 

He didn't even sign it, but Sam knew no dark and evil forces were at work behind his brother's disappearance this time. Just the lies that had always come between them. The lies that had gotten someone they both loved killed this time.

_I can't do this without my brother…I don't-I don't want to do it without my brother…_

Sam sank into the chair and framed the note flat on the surface between his big hands. What the hell was it worth now? In trying to save the one person he couldn't live without, he'd driven him away, burned the bridge, and lost the map.

His chest felt heavy, leaden, there was a burning pain behind his breastbone and his heart was pounding hard, too hard. The room was starting to tilt a little, go gray and blurry at the edges. He thought for a second he might be having a heart attack. That would be fitting he supposed, but too damn easy, too painless an out for what he'd done. Probably just a panic attack then. Yeah, that was it, just a panic attack. He'd just lay his head down here on the table for a minute or two and get his breath back, then he'd go take care of Charlie.

In just a minute…

 

Just one more minute…


End file.
